I've got an old Craftsman smooth plane that was painted blue(!) by some previous owner. It appears to me that either the japanning was totally removed before painting (unlikely, IMO), or the japanning was very much intact and just painted over. I don't want to just repaint over the blue with black. It's certainly not a collectible, and anyway I've already got several Stanley smooth planes, so I'm not worried about any damage I might do. How would you go about removing the blue paint without removing the underlying japanning?

The knob and tote are painted black -- but I applied some stripper and the blue paint just literally dissolved, revealing mostly-intact japanning. I've heard that schools would sometimes paint shop tools (like planes) distinctive colors to discourage theft; maybe this was one such, since the paint doesn't seem to have been very carefully applied. Anyway, it's been soaking in rust remover for a couple of days; I'll start working on it this afternoon.

On the issue of colors -- I understand Stanley/Bailey and Sargent/Craftsman sold some blue planes. What other manufacturers marketed planes in other than basic black?

I pulled the plane bits out of the rust remover and started cleaning. The first thing noticed was the info stamped into the lower right side: “CRAFTSMAN 107-37034” (I understand the “107” indicates Millers Falls was the manufacturer). There is very little pitting on the sole or elsewhere; however, a small chunk is missing from the upper front right-side corner, and the iron is really bad – cutting edge heavily damaged, only about ĺ” left to the weld line.

And one correction: the tote and knob are not painted black. I took a closer look and realized they are in fact black plastic.

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